The course will be a balance of lecture and discussion, punctuated by clips from videos and by passages being read aloud for close analysis. Discussion questions, as a ballast to the class and the breakout groups, will be supplied for the works.

We will explore three different ways of telling a story—the epic, comic and tragic. We will begin with the greatest epic poem in English, John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), a work which changed the way we see the world. We will look at the larger-than-life characterizations of God, Satan, Adam and Eve and the carefully constructed Renaissance cosmos of earth, heaven and hell that they live in. The celebrated comedy we will examine is Richard Sheridan’s brilliant The School for Scandal with its humorous characters Snake and Lady Sneerwell and the dueling brothers Joseph and Charles Surface. That the play served as one of the models for Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen played one of the characters) will come as no surprise, for it is also “light, bright and sparkling.” Our final work will be from the twentieth century master American short story writer Katherine Anne Porter. With imagery reminiscent of the King James Bible, “Noon Wine” brings what Lady Byrd Johnson saw as Greek myths governing people living on a south Texas farm. We will look at the tragic marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, who eventually house the mysterious stranger, Mr. Helton, who brings with him his doomed past. In each narrative structure of epic, comic and tragic, we will discuss the identifying characteristics of each form and apply them to other works students have read.

In terms of pages, the reading is relatively light, but the content is both surprising and challenging, especially when it comes to the Miltonic blank verse, which is so akin, in words to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.